A brief history of Get Real Philippines

Get Real Philippines was started by benign0 as a page hosted on the seminal but now defunct community Web site Geocities.com accessible through the address www.Geocities.com/benign0. The site was originally named “An Honest Evaluation of Filipino Culture” and consisted of various short articles questioning the rationale behind Filipinos’ being beholden to certain cultural artifacts that, seen from a different perspective, actually reflected dysfunctional traits that contributed to a continued failure to prosper. Its creation was also largely inspired by similar amateur sites springing up all over the Web at the time calling for then President Joseph “Erap” Estrada to resign.

GRP logo c.2000

On the 1st of August 2000, a logo bearing an image of the Philippine islands and the words “Get Real!” splashed on top of it was uploaded. Since then, use of the original name declined in favour of this catchier phrase. The 1st of August 2000 is, today, considered to be the founding anniversary of Get Real Philippines (GRP). On the 10th May 2001, the thread An Honest Evaluation of Philippine Culture was opened in the pioneering (and now largest of its kind in the Philippines) message forum site PinoyExchange.com. It was in this forum that the first core team of “getrealists” first met and collaborated on various initiatives revolving around the key concepts that underpin “getrealism”.

On the 8th of February 2005, Get Real Philippines registered the domain GetRealPhilippines.com. Migration to the new domain, however was not to be completed until the 27th October 2009 when Yahoo! finally decommissioned its Geocities service. In that period, Get Real Philippines remained a partially-migrated Web site, with content in both the GetRealPhilippines.com and the Geocities.com/benign0 domains becoming increasingly interlinked as new content was added. Luckily a robust migration solution was found and the site fully migrated to the new domain in time for the shutdown of Geocities.

The essence of Get Real Philippines was finally laid out in book form on the 31st of July 2006 with the release to the public domain of the e-book Get Real Philippines Book 1 which could be downloaded for free from the site. The book was well-regarded by the public with the Noted One himself, blogger Manuel L Quezon III calling it among “the most provocative works in the past twenty years”.

The Year 2008 was a glorious year as it saw three significant milestones for GRP. First was the November opening of the e-zine GetRealPhilippines.NET where the elite articles — the most substantial and timeless — of GRP are published. The second was the establishment of the GRP Channel on YouTube where top-notch original video productions showcasing “getrealist” ideas in moving pictures are broadcast to the Net.

Third was when GRP Web master benign0 on the invitation of Nick Cugtas forayed into blogging on April 2008 writing for the collective blog FilipinoVoices.com (FV). FV was voted among the “Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs” in 2008 and for a time was the most successful Filipino blog of its kind. Benign0 went on to write more than 200 articles for FV, coming up as one of the (if not the) most prolific of its writers.

In 2011, the official blog site of Get Real Philippines, Get Real Post, opened for business and promises to continue delivering the same groundbreaking insight that GRP’s thousands of fans and followers have come to expect and demand of the GRP team.

Felipe

Raissa Robles appears to be no different from those religious nuts who may be able to cite all verses of scripture flawlessly to “support” their own viewpoints and yet end up with conflicting interpretations, as what usually happens when you are beholden to either mammon or some benefactor “false idol” and yet claim to serve [the] Truth.

Ilda

People do not come to GRP for the “citations”; people do not come to GRP because we are “investigative journalists”. No Sir, people come here because of the groundbreaking insights from the writers and those who participate in the comment section. 😉

Francisco Pardoso

A true investigative journalist? Who pays her “investigations”? Because it takes all her time around as an “independent freelance writer”.
The style how she “works” looks more of mud sniffing lapdog with rabies infection. Wuffwuff….

i’m asnwering it as a Filipino, it’s beaucse some English words don’t have their direct translation to Filipino. That’s why we only use the English term. and also to better express what we really want to say. some phrases are better be said in English than in Filipino. in some case like vulgarity. English makes some sentences less vulgar and more pleasing to the ears compared to saying it in Filipino. and i think it is already a part of the Filipino people to talk like that.

Ka Charlie

zzfrancisco Pardoso

Found you whwn searching the web about Raissa Robles. Nice to read some reporta which are not painted yellow by administration spins and the “unified yellow media”.
Wonder where Raissa get all the money which is used for real “investigative journalism” as she insists to be independent? Or is her husband that rich to afford bankrolling Raissa’s fulltime blogging and the household, too?

joeld

Does the messenger really matter more than the message? Do you not see that articles here are real viewpoints from factual events. If you have valid points disagreeing with the authors’ opinions then feel free to comment. Authority/knowledge/background…… really? You think this is a scientific journal?

Steph

Yes it does matter.
You know the saying about the blind leading the blind?
Viewpoints have more weight if based on experience.

Same concept as with pupils learning a language or aquiring and speaking it. The first never works without the latter to be a competent speaker.

🙂

Johnny Saint

(February 14, 2014 - 3:28 am)

“Viewpoints have more weight if based on experience.”

Did you not just state that the individual imparting the idea is (to you) more important than the idea itself? You contradict yourself with this part of your comment. In essence you admit that ideas have merit in and of themselves but that your (personal) belief in them depends on whether or not you consider the person imparting the idea a credible authority. That isn’t very objective. It’s the kind of thinking that perpetrates all sorts of foolish notions and outlandish beliefs systems like the absolute certainty that the Earth is the centre of the universe or that the world is flat. Or that bloodletting in relation to certain astrological signs would cure sickness by correcting imbalances in the humours. You can believe in all sorts of popular opinions; it doesn’t necessarily mean they are factually accurate or true.

From the Italian scientist Galileo Galelei:

“Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.”

and

“(In questions of science), the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

Johnny Saint

(February 14, 2014 - 3:53 am)

The objective is to subject any opinion or idea to common sense, reason and intellect to see how it measures up, not to bow to authority or blindly follow the tyranny of the majority.

joeld

(February 14, 2014 - 10:47 am)

@ steph

Ideas here are not new, for you to imply that the site is teaching new concepts/ideas. Have a quick read of the articles and you will see that it is here, now, happening in real time, being given real interpretations / reactions / analyses / solutions by the authors. If you do not agree it with it, then feel free to post it here.

Translation we should take elected Public officials at face value because of what is on their resume. If you don’t see a resume there is no way what us written can have any worth. Oh you are not allowed to question someone whose resume does not stack up with what you are willing to reveal about yourself. The words are incapable of speaking for themselves. Noynoy was given power by our voters and credibility not for brains or accomplishment but simply because who his mother was and when she died. A chimp could skewer that national dysfunction. Failing that, let me quote David Letterman , ” how much did you pay to get in?”

Amir Al Bahr

Please do remember to evaluate the concepts here by how well they are constructed and argued, rather than who constructed and argued for them. In this kind of space, credibility is not established by credentials, but with consistency.

Think. Please.

Raquel Rivera

Hi, I read your blog: Why Fil are Immature. I would say some are true but just like all our experiences, we all grow out of it and live life thru thick and thin, whether to prove your loved ones, or to prove to yourself that you can make it. In my response, I am only speaking for my life experience. I am 60 yrs of age. Thank you tho for bringing this up.
1. We Have Difficulty Accepting the Consequences of Our Actions – SOME BUT NOT EVERYONE
2. We React Negatively When Criticized – GENERALLY I SEE THIS AS TRUE, FILIPINOS LOVE TO PLEASE PEOPLE
3. We are Incapable of Responsible Decisions – NOT TRUE AT ALL
4. We are Focused on Fun and Not Efficiency – NO I DON’T BELIEVE IN THIS
5. We are Easily Distracted – MAYBE BUT WE ARE ALO REALISTS

Ethan Hilario

Groundbreaking insights paid for by Danding and the Marcoses to sow theories that seem logical but are not based on any empirical evidence; everything you write is based on “di ba, di ba,” and “tara, tayo na’t magalit nang one-sided.” Sayang. Sa itinanda ninyo sa internet, hindi nag-unlad ang pinanggagalingan niyo.